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A Politician Whose Faith Is Central to His Persistence

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Throughout his political career, Representative Todd Akin’s agenda has been driven by a belief that his mission came from God.

As a Republican member of Congress, he has sponsored legislation to name 2008 “The National Year of the Bible,” and to promote greater recognition of the Ten Commandments. A member of the Presbyterian Church in America, Mr. Akin has accused liberals of trying to remove God from the public sphere. And as the Republican establishment closed ranks on him Tuesday, trying to force him to withdraw from the Missouri Senate race after his controversial remarks about rape and abortion, Mr. Akin provided divine reasoning as to why he would not quit.

It was “appropriate to recognize a creator, God, whose blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the very source of American freedom,” Mr. Akin, 65, said in a radio interview. “And that part of the message I feel is missing” from the campaign, he said, adding, “That’s the reason why we’re going to continue. Because I believe there is a cause here.”

Mr. Akin’s defiance and insistence that even without the establishment’s support, he can defeat the incumbent Democrat, Senator Claire McCaskill, in a race that could decide the balance of power in the Senate was indicative of his nearly quarter-century in politics in which he regularly embraced the underdog role, relying on grass-roots support and his faith to power him through.

Outspoken and blunt — too blunt, some might say — Mr. Akin, 65, is no stranger to incendiary comments. He has criticized federal spending on things like school lunches and student loans and has been quick to equate government spending to socialism.

“ ‘God called me to run’ — that’s the way he thinks,” said Jeff Smith, a former Democratic state senator in Missouri, said of Mr. Akin, a six-term congressman who represents parts of eastern Missouri. “I think he thinks it’s his destiny, and so you’re going to have to get somebody pretty high up there — or, in his mind, pretty close to God — to push him out.”

Before Sunday, Mr. Akin was favored to defeat Ms. McCaskill. But then a Fox affiliate in St. Louis showed an interview in which he said that women possess a biological mechanism to ward off pregnancy if they become victims of “legitimate rape.” Major donors responded by saying they would cut off Mr. Akin’s financing. Prominent national Republican officials have asked him to drop out of the race, fearing he could not win.

Mr. Akin was first elected to the Missouri House in 1988 and much of his base in his early years as a legislator came from being a part of a network of parents who home-schooled their children. All six of his children were home-schooled. His election to Congress in 2000 was a stroke of good fortune, local political analysts said. He was seen as an outside candidate in a five-way Republican primary that he won by 56 votes, in part because the more moderate candidates cut into each other’s tally.

Photo

Todd Akin in St. Louis in November 2000, giving his acceptance speech after defeating Ted House for a Congressional seat.Credit
Karen Elshout/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated Press

In the three-person Republican Senate primary this year, Mr. Akin also was not favored, yet he won in part because Ms. McCaskill and her supporters spent nearly $2 million on advertisements highlighting his conservatism. This was part of the McCaskill camp’s strategy to help Mr. Akin win the race, as it thought he would be the easiest candidate to beat in the general election.

William Todd Akin was born in New York on July 5, 1947, but grew up in St. Louis, near where his family had a steel business. He is, in some ways, an enigma.

While he home-schooled all of his children and is appealing mostly to a working-class constituency, he graduated from an elite suburban St. Louis prep school, John Burroughs. He got a degree in engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute before earning a master’s in divinity from the Covenant Theological Seminary in Missouri.

He worked as a manager at now-bankrupt Laclede Steel, the company his great-grandfather founded and served at as president, succeeded by Mr. Akin’s grandfather and father. Mr. Akin’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father all attended Harvard.

Mr. Akin chose a different career path, one influenced by his faith.

Rick Mathes, of the Mission Gate Prison Ministry, where Mr. Akin serves on the advisory board, said that Mr. Akin’s beliefs drive his political approaches and work. “He wouldn’t violate his beliefs if you shot him,” said Mr. Mathes, who added that he and Mr. Akin, who participates in Bible studies and prayer groups, were “far to the right” of people like Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Akin, said Mr. Mathes, believed that “America needs to be returned to its roots, its Judeo-Christian roots.”

Yet officials worry that though Mr. Akin has had success speaking to an evangelical constituency, he would struggle in appealing to diverse groups of voters.

But Jonathan Sternberg, a state Republican committee member, said he was drawn to Mr. Akin by his well-spoken, common-sense economic approach. At one event, Mr. Akin spoke of how he had to tell President George W. Bush that he could not vote for education, Medicare and bailout bills that the Mr. Bush asked him to support because of their budgetary implications.

Still, he acknowledged that Mr. Akin’s mouth could sometimes get him into trouble. “Todd Akin works so hard and tears himself so ragged,” Mr. Sternberg said, “that he has the propensity to say things without thinking.”

Reporting was contributed by Monica Davey and Steven Yaccino in Chicago, Jonathan Weisman and Rebecca Berg in Washington, and Alain Delaquérière in New York.

A version of this article appears in print on August 22, 2012, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: A Politician Whose Faith Is Central to His Persistence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe